


Watchdogs LLC

by DesdemonaKaylose



Category: Wander Over Yonder
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-28
Updated: 2016-07-04
Packaged: 2018-07-18 21:11:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7330810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesdemonaKaylose/pseuds/DesdemonaKaylose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You’re the bastard who keeps parking right in front of my house so I retaliated by keying your car and you caught me” AU for deathglare</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [somethingscarlet13](https://archiveofourown.org/users/somethingscarlet13/gifts).



On a Monday afternoon just before his cartoons come on, Hater looks out the window, and instead of his neighbor’s kumquat trees he sees a boxy little smart car. Parked _directly_ in front of his house. For the fifth time this week. It’s black and it looks like it probably gets fifty miles to the gallon, and it’s the most ostentatiously dweeby thing he’s seen since he got stuck in traffic behind a tuba convention last year, which is saying something because the world seems to be full of geeks constantly trying to ruin his day. 

He grinds his teeth together. This whole neighborhood is full of suburban _squares_ , but at least they don’t park in front his house on a daily basis. This is the last straw, that is _his_ section of curb. It doesn’t matter if he’s not using it (his van is currently up on cinder blocks in the yard, until he can squeeze a new set of tires out of somebody at the junkshop), because that curb belongs to _him._

Hater slams the curtains closed, which is difficult to do but he’s got a lot of practice, and stalks back to the kitchen. He’s gonna show that ecofriendly space invader exactly how the Greatest in the Tri-state Area handles encroachment on his turf. He digs in the bowl on the island, knocking a barrage of guitar picks left and right until he finally finds his car keys. This’ll really show ‘im. He storms out the foyer, past his cardboard standees of famous rockstars, and down the porch steps over the fallen Halloween flamingo that he hasn’t picked up in six months, and out to the curb where he stands for a few minutes just… seething.

There’s a bumpersticker with some libertarian slogan. He has never loathed another person as much as he loathes the specter of this starch-collar-wearing yahoo parked precisely parallel to his front lawn. He crouches down to the level of the bumper sticker (not easy) and he keys a big ugly anarchy symbol right over it. _Heck_ yeah. Hater's always been kind of an _artist_ , you know, like one of those anti-establishment hardcore street artists. A Banky. A Bantsie? Either way, he's the kind of guy who never let a lunch detention stop him from drawing every single string of intestines in a middle school reproduction of Edvard Munch's _The Scream_.

He does another one higher up, because bending over to get at this tiny car is a pain in his six-foot-three butt. That looks good, so he does a couple lightning bolts and a big skull, and the logo for the band he never actually started. Then he gets really into it, starts a big “H” at the rear side door and scrawls forward. This is probably his best work ever, he’s halfway done keying the jagged trunk of the “T” when his elbow knocks into somebody’s forehead.

He freezes.

The man standing at his arm is a petite little thing, and his face shows precisely the kind of motionless calm fury that precedes pacific typhoons. Hater zooms in on the collar of his dress shirt. Starched! Starched collar! It's the guy!

“Uh,” he says.

“ _What,_ ” the little man says, “are you doing?”

“Uh,” Hater says again.

“Because it _looks_ like you’re keying my car,” the man continues.

“I… am?”

Hater draws back into himself, clutching his key against his chest. What to do, what to do—This fussy little nerd is probably going to call the cops and Hater’s had enough noise complaints leveled against him at this point that the police are probably just _waiting_ for an excuse to drag him off. But, he thinks, looking down at the man whose face is slowly turning an uncanny shade of burgundy, isn’t Hater _bigger?_

He pulls himself up into what he imagines is an intimidating loom. “Yeah!” he says, “I am! So what, huh?”

“So I hope you have insurance,” the man says, and manages to make it sound like an actual threat.

Hater reaches out and grabs this nerd by the starched collar (he notices that there’s a pretty slick leather jacket over the collar, but it doesn’t register until some time later) and drags him up onto his toes.

“Look,” he growls, “you little pipsqueak, this is _my house_ and this is _my curb_ , and you should have shown some respect the last five times you parked in front of it, because it’s _mine!_ And if I catch you parking here again I’ll do more than key your car! Yeah! I’ll break your windows, I’ll, I’ll—”

Hater becomes suddenly aware of how the squall of fury has drained off the man’s face, leaving not the cowering fear he had expected, but some kind of… calculating… interest. The man’s eyes positively gleam now. He has very striking eyes. Hater kind of loses his train of thought while he’s thinking about how nice they are.

“Uh,” he says, for the third time.

The man rests and arm over Hater’s fist, like it’s a banister or something. “What do you do?” he asks.

“Do?”

“For a living. Where do you work?”

“I’m, uh,” Hater glances back over his shoulder at the house, with its overgrown lawn and the van parked in front, “I’m unemployed. Currently. It’s just a minor setback, though, something’s gonna come through any day now.”

The man digs into his jacket pocket, ignoring Hater’s hand fisted in his shirt like it doesn’t exist. He pulls out a business card. It says, “C. Peepers, Watchdogs LLC.” Hater takes the thing from him before he can even question why he’s going along with it.

“I have a feeling,” this Peepers guy says, “that you aren’t living up to your full potential.”

 

 

The café where they meet is tiny and modern and Hater finds himself crunched into a seat by the window. It's a taller table—Peepers' feet dangle above the tile like a little kid's. He's wearing Doc Martins with the thickest soles Hater's ever seen, and he _guesses_ they're _kinda_ cool. At least compared to the rest of the café, which is full of sleepy hipsters and confused yuppies giving Hater's whole body unsubtle looks.

"I have to say I love your tattoos," Peepers is telling him, although at the moment he's actually watching the people who are watching Hater. "Where did you have them done?"

"Uh," Hater says, distracted, "Jeff."

"...Jeff?"

Hater breaks off from staring down a young guy in a paisley tie. "Sure. Jeff. He's a loser now but he's still the best guy for black and grey work."

"I—I was thinking more—no, it's fine, never mind." Peepers pops the lid off his drink and shakes about a pound of cinnamon into the otherwise black coffee. "Tell me about your work experience."

So Hater tells him about the autoshop, where he worked for three years and then was fired for smashing a customer's back window after they brought up something unpleasant that had happened in tenth grade. He also tells him about the job he had in high school bagging groceries, which he was fired from for shouting at a customer. He does not tell him about the ponypals memorabilia he's been sniping and re-auctioning for the last six months to pay rent. That's not really the image he wants to project here. He's been ranting about Terry from tenth grade English for about five minutes when he finally notices Peepers' eyes are not anywhere near his face.

"Hey," he says, waving a hand, "my eyes are up _here?"_

Peepers goes _red._ Like, Hater hasn't actually seen a human being turn that red since someone in his kindergarten class got anaphylactic shock in the middle snack time. The small man's eyes snap up from the region of Hater's shoulders (probably admiring his extremely cool cut-off tee, understandably) back to his face.

"Sorry," he says. "I was—nevermind. Let's get back on track. Where do you see yourself in five years?"

Hater purses his lips, taps the tabletop. "Haven't really thought that far ahead..." he says. He nods vaguely to himself. "Rockstar, probably."

“Rockstar,” Peepers echoes. “Why?”

“Weeeeell,” Hater says, rocking back from the table, “rockstars are _cool_ and _respected_ and they get all the pretty ladies, and they get to smash stuff whenever they want and the record company has to pay for it. They get to be on tv, and people listen to them, and they get to tell everybody what to do because they’re the star and if they don’t get what they want they can just _walk.”_

Peepers is scratching something into a little pad of lined paper. “So you want to smash things, and you want to boss people around.”

Hater nods.

Peepers looks up from his notes, and he’s got that same unnerving gleam in his eyes from yesterday. He taps the end of his pen against the table, absently, and it’s now that Hater finally registers the sleek leather jacket he’s wearing. It looks like a company jacket—WATCHDOG is emblazoned on the back in old-fashioned cloth stitching—but Hater can’t think of any company that regularly hands out leather jackets to its employees. You’d almost think the guy was some teeny nerdy Hell’s Angel.

“Alright, Mr—?”

“Hater,” Hater says, folding his hands in his lap.

“What—really? Is that Anglican?”

Hater is sure as heck not gonna tell anybody his birth name, so he just nods again, trying to look convincing.

“Oh…kay…” Peepers takes a sip of his drink, brows furrowed. He gives Hater another searching look, but the poker face seems to be holding, because he lets it go after a minute. “Anyways, Mr. Hater, I have a business proposition for you.”

He pushes a ream of paper across the table. It’s emblazoned with the same name as the business card, and it’s basically a big hunk of data and sentences that Hater doesn’t know where to start picking apart. He spots “duties” in one of the headers, and there’s a pie chart with things like “revenue percentage quarterly” labeled in the bigger slices. He can feel his eyes glazing over.

Peepers’ hand slams down smack in the middle of it all. Hater blinks up and finds the man leaned up over the table, eyes bright, basically jittering with enthusiasm.

“I work for a private security company,” he says. “Extremely private. We’ve got steady work freelancing as force multipliers and temp security patrol, but we haven’t got the _oomph_ to be big players right now.”

“Oomph?”

“Right,” Peepers says. He flips open to a page that looks exactly like every other nonsensical page of his omnibus. “We need a face, a central force, a rallying point. I’m looking to establish us as an agency in our own right, a brand, if you will. As it stands I’m limited by the types of work we can lock in without some physical force to back up our negotiations—” he pauses, lips twisting into a wry half-smile. “You might have noticed, but I don’t exactly strike an imposing figure.”

“I noticed,” Hater says, helpfully.

Peepers stares at him for a moment, and then his gaze slides back down to the papers. “Right, so. That’s what you’re going to do. I need someone who can handle the face to face part of the job, talking to the clients and the venues where necessary, ideally you’d be present at any events over a certain size in order to function as the head in the chain of command—”

“Whoa whoa whoa,” Hater cuts in. He takes a long sip of his extra frothy mocha latte and peers over his drink at Peepers. “I dunno if I’m really _into_ it, y'know? It sounds like a lot of effort, and I’ve got a sweet thing going on, working from home.”

“—But,” Peepers says, “but you’ll have a _much_ more comfortable wage working for an established company?”

“Eh,” Hater says.

“And it’ll be managerial, you won’t have to start at the ground floor or anything!”

“Eh,” Hater says.

Peepers draws back, shuffling his papers furiously. “Look,” he hisses, “I didn’t want to get into this here, but you should know that when I say _private_ security I mean the kind of security that isn’t always on the books. I mean the kind of security where you do not, generally, have a boring evening on the job. I mean—” he says, his whisper steadily growing louder, “the kind of security where you can, will, and _should_ smash a lot of things, dramatically and loudly, so that people will shut up and listen while you’re talking!”

Hater sips thoughtfully on his drink. Peepers watches him with huge eyes, panting slightly. Finally, Hater says, “Well, I guess I could try it out for a little while. Since you guys need me so badly.”

Peepers practically sinks off his chair, but Hater is too busy thinking about the bright new future ahead of him to care about that—something full of lights and smoke and the scream of a guitar riff playing just for him. Big. Loud. Impressive.

He’s gonna rock this guy's clients, whoever they are, like nothing they’ve ever seen.

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

Hater demands to have his own jacket, first thing. Peepers puts in a call to somebody and it shows up on his doorstep two days later, carried in Peepers’ hands. He’s standing on the doorstep looking kind of nervous, his fingers drumming on the cardboard.

“Can I come in?” he asks.

Hater’s eyes slide back to the astrophysics documentary still playing on the TV, and he says, “One sec.”

As he rushes to switch the channel to WWE, he hears Peepers clicking the door closed behind himself.

“It’s a nice place you have here,” Peepers remarks, sounding surprised. “How did you get it?”

Hater makes an irritated little noise. “It’s my aunt’s,” he says. “I just rented it from her because it’s cheap.” Something occurs to him belatedly, and he turns around to ask, “Why were _you_ parking in front of it?”

“Your neighbor, Dave? He’s a watchdog.”

“A what?”

“A… watchdog? A member of the company you’re joining?”

“Oh.” Hater kicks his feet up on the coffee table, nearly upending a can of half-drunk Monster. He was in the middle of a marathon when Peepers showed up.

Peepers is still looking around, like he’s trying to catalogue the contents of room for future reference. He’s got cool shoes and a nice jacket, but Hater can practically smell the nerd on him. Maybe he’d got himself slammed in so many lockers that he started formulating a battle plan every time he walked into a room. It would explain why he’s giving Hater’s kitchen such a thorough looking over. He sets the cardboard box with the jacket in it on the coffee table, absently sorting magazines into a neat stack to make room for it.

“I wanted to go over the job with you,” Peepers says, “to make sure we’re on the same page about duties? I’ve got a couple contracts for you to sign too—we don’t officially list the ins and outs of our company when it comes time to pay taxes, I’ll grant you, but it’s good for our records internally if we have this stuff in writing.”

Hater really doesn’t care, but Peepers is already in his house and there’s a sweet jacket to unpack, so he lets the little guy ramble for a bit while he tries on his new threads. Fits like a dream. Peepers must have a good eye for sizing, he can’t hardly find anything that really fits him these days—it was easier in high school before he grew the extra couple inches and put on that last couple pounds of weight over the linebacker muscles.

“So do you think you have it all?” Peepers asks him, barely blinking as Hater flexes and flips his collar up in the hall mirror. Hater catches his eye in the reflection and lifts an eyebrow.

“Blah blah blah paycheck bah blah intimidation, sure, I got it.”

“That’s hot—not! That’s not what I said,” Peepers says.

“Look,” Hater says, crossing his arms, “you’re smart, right?”

Peepers seems to lean forward a little bit. “I am,” he says.

Hater swivels just enough to give him a look. “So you stick to that, and I’ll stick to being awesome and cool. Everybody does what they're good at. Don’t bug me with the boring preparation stuff.”

Peepers bites his lip, but he looks interested. Of course he’s interested, it’s a great plan. “Well…” he says.

“So it’s settled.” Hater goes back to looking at himself in the mirror. He’s still got his old letterman jacket around but this one is way less jock-ish and he’s so over all that lame-o high school crap. This is just the replacement he’d been looking for.

“I’ve still got to get you to fill these out,” Peepers says, flashing the papers at Hater’s reflection, “and then there’s the matter of your first event—there’s some rules, protocol…”

Hater sighs. “Peeps—you don’t mind if I call you Peeps—”

“Uh, n-no?”

“Peeps,” Hater says, talking over him, “Skip the lecture. Just tell me where I’m going and I’ll go.”

 

 

The inside of the hotel is pretty… schmooze-y. Hater gives the chandelier a nasty look as he passes underneath it, following Peepers through the crowd. The room is full of men in dress clothes, some of them sporting scars on their visible expanses of skin.

“So, uh,” Hater says, “is this like… a convention for death match investment brokers?”

“That’s one way of putting it,” Peepers says. He’s wearing his jacket again, but there’s a tie and a starched collar underneath, like he’s about to rip it off and join the actuary death match at any minute. He better not ditch Hater in the middle of this snooze fest. “While you’re here,” he says, “keep in mind that you shouldn’t…”

Hater tunes the rest out. There is a _very_ pretty lady at the bar, and she looks like she’s here alone. He’s trying to select the pick-up line that’s got the best combination of subtle and self-complimenting when he hears Peepers ask, “Got it, sir?”

“Sir?” he repeats. “Aren’t you paying me?”

“Of course.”

“So you’re my boss,” Hater concludes, somewhat sullenly.

“Well, technically speaking,” Peepers hedges, “I’m your _employer_ , but you’re my boss in the field.”

Hater stops walking. “I’m your boss?”

Peepers keeps on going, oblivious, so after a moment Hater scrambles after him.

“I thought it was best to present a unified front,” Peepers says. He’s pulled out his notebook and he’s flipping through it again, crossing out one or two items. “We’ll have more success if it’s clear that we’re all behind you, so while we’re out working I’ll be taking any orders of yours and passing them down the chain of command. Naturally I’ll be issuing orders of my own as well, I don’t expect you to run the minutia of the day-to-day.”

“I’m your boss,” Hater says again, breaking into a grin so wide it pulls his skin. He’s at the top, at the actual top! There’s a chain of command and he’s at the top of it! He can _so_ get used to this.

Peepers looks up from his checklist, pencil paused over an item. “Ye-es,” he says, slowly.

“So you’ve gotta do whatever I say.”

Peepers is staring at him again, his eyes wide. “With—within reason,” he says, “—yes.”

Hater cracks his knuckles. “This job might be alright after all,” he says. Belatedly, he notices Peepers, who is still staring at him. “You done?”

“…Yes sir,” Peepers says, and buries himself in his checklist.

Peepers excuses himself pretty fast after that, so Hater makes a beeline for the pretty blond woman at the bar. She’s dressed in a blue skirt suit, and she’s drinking something green in a martini glass. She looks older than him, probably, but that’s never stopped him before.

“Hey there,” he says, sliding an elbow over the counter. Women love it when you get _right_ between them and whatever they’re doing, especially if you’re in their personal space. “You know what’s on the menu tonight? I checked with the caterer, and it’s me ‘n you.”

The lady draws back a couple inches. That’s normal, she’s probably giving his genius some space. She looks from his patently winning smile to his tattoos and back. “I think you have the wrong person,” she says. “I’m here with someone.”

“What _ever_ ,” Hater says, scooting a little closer. “Ditch that loser and hook up with a winner. Name’s Hater, and I’m the greatest.”

“The… greatest what?”

Hater’s expression sours. “Greatest—everything, I don’t know, I’m great is all.”

“I’m really not interested,” she says, and she’s looking at something over his shoulder. He turns to see what’s so important that it’s cutting into his swag here, and finds himself looming over some scowling nobody. The guy’s nose is about level with his pecs.

“Excuse me, friend,” the nobody says, “but that’s my girlfriend you’re chatting up.”

Hater shoots her a full, pointed eyebrow lift. “This is your guy? _Bluh_. Forget him, I’m a waaaay better catch. I’ve got this CD you’ll love. It’s me, mostly, I do a little guitar—”

Hater’s cheek catches the fist at such an angle that it mostly just thumps against his teeth. It’s not much of a hit. He pouts a little bit, rubbing at his cheek as he rabbit punches the guy in his mousy little forehead. The guy goes down like a sack of potatoes: lumpy and uncoordinated.

“Anyways,” Hater says, turning back to the lady, “like I was saying, I designed the cover art too—”

He notices belatedly that she’s not there anymore. He blinks, twists, and finds her on the ground next to her boring boyfriend, checking his pulse and fussing over him and whatever. Hater blows an irritated breath over his bottom lip. Okay. Well, guess that one is a strike out then. She was too old for him anyways.

He stalks off to the caterer’s table and starts piling a plate with tiny sausages. Women don’t know what they’re missing out on with him. He’s the full package. He can play guitar, he has a whole house to himself, he’s got killer pecs and the coolest tattoos of anybody he knows—it’s downright bewildering what they see in dweeby little nobodies like whatshisface when Hater is right here and single. It’s almost like women are interested in something besides surface appearances.

Hater turns to the dessert table to drown his wounded ego in crème puffs, only to find some guy in another leather jacket blocking his way. The guy sidles up to him while he’s piling his plate up with free grub, and puts his elbow right into the coleslaw while he’s trying to do that casual-lean thing that people in TV shows do.

Hater squints at him while he’s hastily scraping slaw from his jacket. “Uhhh,” he says, “can I _help_ you?”

“Bill,” the guy says, offering his gross hand like he expects Hater to shake it. After a second he catches on and scrambles for a napkin. “Six years with Watchdogs. So, Mr. Peepers says you’re the new boss!”

“Uh huh.”

“Pretty wild,” Bill says, scratching his neck. “Mr. Peepers has never taken on anybody at a rank higher than him before. He must have big plans…?”

Hater shrugs. He doesn’t care one way or another about any of that—point him at a target that needed shaking down, and he’d shake it down. If Peepers’ scheming is gonna make him bigger or richer or both, he’s fine with letting the little guy work as hard as he wants to.

“What’s your relationship with the boss?” Bill pushes. He’s blocking the canapés.

“Okay, first off,” Hater says, narrowing his eyes, “I’m the boss now. Me. Not Peepers, _me_. And you better get used to it, ‘cause I’m not going _anywhere_.”

Hater takes a step closer, and Bill’s eyes go super wide, like his whole life is flashing in front of him. Hater has nearly a foot on this guy, and when he leans in closer his shadow swallows up everything.

Bill tugs his collar. “Uh, sure, sir. Right you are. I’ll just—I think the door guard needs their union mandated break—”

Hater watches him scamper off—he does a good scamper for a guy who could probably bench press his own mother—and feels a lot better about himself all of a sudden.

For next quarter hour Hater does some vague circling, checking the doors and giving the stink eye to clumps of well dressed men who seem like they’re about to get rowdy. Nothing particularly interesting happens. He’s thinking about skulking off to his car to get his MP3 player when that same little nobody comes marching up to him, his forehead purpled and twisted up in a cartoonish frown.

“That’s the guy what was mackin on my girl,” nobody says, turning back to another man who must have been following him. The new guy is as big as Hater, and he’s got this pale crewcut that just screams “dumb muscle”.

“You punched mister Aragoni,” new guy says, pulling back his lips to reveal some seriously messed up teeth.

“Body guard, huh,” Hater says, looking him up and down.

At this point there’s a high pitched yelp, and suddenly Peepers is skating between them, his feet practically kicking up friction fires on the nice carpet. He pressed his hands to Hater’s stomach, like he’s trying to hold him in place.

“Hater,” he hisses, “what is going _on_ here?”

Hater tips his chin up at the body guard. “This meathead wants a piece of me.”

“ _Why_?”

Hater snorts. “I dunno,” he says, “his boss’s girlfriend isn’t even that hot.”

“You hit on the guests? You hit on the guests’ _girlfriends_? But I—I _specifically_ warned you not to do that,” Peepers says. “Weren’t you listening?”

“Uh,” Hater says, “no.”

Peepers moans, taking one hand off Hater’s abdomen to dig the heel of his palm into his cheek. “Look,” he says, “you can’t beat this guy. We’re looking at a PR _disaster_ if he knocks you down right after I’ve hired you. Back off _now_.”

Hater scowls, looking from Peepers to the body guard, who is sneering at the whole exchange. Oh, no way. Heck no. He reaches down and grabs Peepers by the back of the collar, physically dragging him out of the way like a scruffed kitten. “If this clown wants a piece of Hater,” he says, “he can have it.”

The body guard shows his mess of teeth, cracks his neck, and has just enough time to make a big show of rolling his shoulders before Hater gets an elbow around his neck and drags him down onto a gut punch that makes him spit out a _gmmph_ of pain. Hater slams the other fist against his temple, and lets him stumble forward into the canapés. There’s a moment of silence as everyone in the vicinity watches the body guard hit the ground, knees first, and heave agonized breaths over the carpet.

“Oh,” Peepers says, softly.

Hater turns back to him and crosses his arms. Peepers is looking a little like he’s also been hit upside the head with Hater’s mammoth fist, kind of starry eyed and unbalanced. Hater smirks.

“Well gee,” he says, brushing his knuckles off against his shirt, “didn’t think I could do it, _huh_? Look who’s got egg on their face now. It’s you, isn’t it?”

Peepers looks up from the fallen guard to Hater, and he says, “Yes, _sir_.”

It’s totally sincere, as far as Hater can tell; he can’t find a hint of irony anywhere in Peepers’ expression. The little guy is hardly even blinking. It makes Hater feel a little weird, but, like, a _good_ weird, mostly.


End file.
